Berklee grads help each other find success in Music City

Credit: Unknown

DREAM JOB: Songwriters Emily Shackelton, above, and David Petrelli are some of the Berklee grads making inroads in Nashville, Tenn.

Credit: Unknown

DREAM JOB: Songwriters Emily Shackelton and David Petrelli, above, are some of the Berklee grads making inroads in Nashville, Tenn.

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To make it in Nashville, you can look and sing like Hayden Panettiere or you can write her songs.

While Boston has a booming music scene, songwriters with a twang to their tunes increasingly find they need Nashville to succeed.

“Ninety-nine times out of 100, you need to be here to make it in country music,” songwriter Emily Shackelton said. “You need to be down here writing, playing, networking and getting ­noticed.”

As a Berklee student, Shackelton fell for Nashville, Tenn., during the college’s annual spring break trip to Music City, where undergrads meet with established alums. After moving South, she had sporadic luck.

But since signing with the publishing company Liz Rose Music — Rose co-wrote many of Taylor Swift’s biggest hits — Shackelton put the Panettiere-sung “Love Like Mine” on ABC’s “Nashville” and the TV show’s soundtrack. Later this year, Shackelton will release her own album.

She has plenty of ­talent, but she’s one in a sea of wannabe Taylor Swifts, ­Miranda Lamberts and Carrie Underwoods.

“In the five years following Taylor Swift’s success, I’ve seen a huge influx of young women chasing that dream,” session musician Smith Curry said. “Most of them were 15 and brought down from Ohio or wherever by their parents. Some of them are good, but there’s a lot of them.”

After almost 20 years in Nashville, the Massachusetts-born Curry has seen waves of hopeful singers, songwriters and session musicians arrive. Curry has played and recorded with Swift. He knows she has a rare gift, but believes — even with all the competition — determined talents can still break out of Nashville.

The first piece of advice he has for hopefuls:

“Move here. I don’t care how good you are, you can’t compete unless you’re here.”

Ex-Cambridge cat Jabe Beyer agrees. The songwriter made the move nearly a decade ago during a mass influx of Yankees. When asked how many Massachusetts friends he has in the scene, he easily lists a dozen, ending with Angelo Petraglia — the former member of Boston’s Face to Face who has worked on all five Kings of Leon albums.

With Berklee pumping out constant classes of musical whiz kids, the ­Boston-Nashville connection grows stronger — the college lists 639 in the Nashville alumni network.

The budding songwriter planned to move to Los Angeles after school, but his would-be West Coast internship supervisor told him he’d be a better fit for Nashville. It was a shock to Petrelli as he’s a songwriter who doesn’t do country.

Over the last decade, as the bottom dropped out of CD sales, Nashville’s establishment has expanded into pop, rock and TV and film music.

Petrelli represents the new Nashville. His songs mix Billy Joel pop with Journey rock, but he’s finding inroads to country — he appeared as a piano player on three episodes of “Nashville.”

“I’ve only been here seven years, but I’ve seen it change,” he said. “It’s expanding to become the songwriting capital of ­every genre out there.”